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Road Building Resembles 3D Printing With This New Machine

We all joke about following the Yellow Brick Road, but what if we could see a machine laying it down right in front of us? That’s precisely what the Dutch-company Vanku BV did when they designed the Tiger Stone. It’s a state of the art, revolutionary way to reduce injuries for workers and make a cost-efficient brick roadway that can be up to 6 yards in width. The Tiger Stone’s work looks pretty easy. Two to three workers feed the Tiger Stone bricks.

Unlike the old days of masonry, though, instead of spending long hours on all fours, mortaring and fitting, the masons just feed the machine bricks from an upright position while either a small bulldozer, or even assistants, bring them more bricks from the pile.It’s the creation of an entire brick road right before your eyes – without the fuss or hassle of back-breaking labor or long-term injury.

The Tiger Stone may very well change the face of masonry in a lot of ways. And because it does its own sorting, it’s possible to feed the Tiger Stone different patterns of stones – to give a multi layered, woven effect to streets, parks, and even driveways. Very few machines have really changed the process of building roads like the Tiger Stone, but times are changing. For instance, take a look at this machine that uses the same concept to build bridges.

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In the old days (now), it took a lot of manpower, tools, equipment, and planning in order to build a road or even an extended walkway. Activities like laying bricks could be very

The Tiger Stone: New Versus Old Way Of Building Roads

In the old days (now), it took a lot of manpower, tools, equipment, and planning in order to build a road or even an extended walkway. Activities like laying bricks could be very labor intensive and result in injuries. Now, instead of needing a large, industrial crew to build a road, all you need is a level and graded path and a pattern of bricks in mind. Pallets of bricks are dropped off at intervals and workers feed that pattern into the top trough of the Tiger Stone.

The secret lies in letting gravity do most of the work. The Tiger Stone incorporates an angled plane which feeds an electric crawler. The bricks are fed out into a set pattern from the hopper to the base layer on the ground. At present, the machine requires at least one to three other workers in order to operate properly – and there will still likely be a crew behind them ensuring bricks are properly stationed and the road is looking like it should. But, ultimately, the Tiger Stone completely reshapes the whole playing field when it comes to laying down intricate brick roads and walkways that people love. The Tiger Stone is able to pull this off by using an intricate set of sensors to detect the edges of the bricks to ensure they interlock properly. Another set of sensors on the Tiger Stone ensure that the bricks are touching the ground at the right angle so they slide into sequence on the ground.

From 3D Printed Structures To Machine-Laid Roads

It’s all another great invention from Dutch industrial engineer, Henk van Kuijk. He’s the director of the Dutch industrial company known as Vanku. Like any industrial engineer, nobody wants to get down on their hands and knees and spend endless hours moving bricks from a stack into a pattern by hand. Amazingly, that’s the way we’ve been doing it for time immemorial. And now Henk van Kuijk has introduced the path forward. No pun intended. This invention also changes the pace at which roads are built. During good daytime conditions, the Tiger Stone can lay 400 square meters a day. That’s an entire extended outdoor patio or a quarter mile of path a day. Just think of the possibilities! You can pave an entire park with an intricate pattern of bricks versus just standard asphalt and it would only take weeks instead of months. That’s the difference the Tiger Stone brings to the field. The only finishing work needed after the Tiger Stone lays a path is just for a tamper to come behind the road and press the brick into the ground. This is much easier than our current way of doing it. At present, each stone or brick has to be meticulously laid out by a set of hard-worked hands and then pressed into place. As humans have a higher degree of error than well engineered machines, there’s almost certainly going to be some flaw that needs to be corrected later (or ignored). With the Tiger Stone, the first time is the only time. The savings in manpower and money is unimaginable.

We have 3D printing machines that can print houses and now we have a road maker to build the driveway to those houses. Wow, the future is shaping up pretty bright with new inventions like advanced 3D printing and innovations like the Tiger Stone. We can’t wait to see what comes next.